Bank account closed!?

The "de-banking" trend extends to the likes of Starling, Wise, Revolut, and Monzo. One client's Starling business account, which had received US dollar payments from South Africa for years, suddenly had payments rejected. Starling claimed South Africa's risk profile had been reclassified—an internal decision with no FCA basis, clearly driven by risk-reward calculations. For digital banks in 2025, the question is no longer "Can we profit from this customer?" but "Is the profit worth the multi-million-pound fine if we miss one suspicious transaction?" Starling's £29 million FCA fine in late 2024 for "shockingly lax" controls and Monzo's £21 million penalty in early 2025 for AML failings have led to accounts being closed rather than investigated. If a customer generates less than the cost of monitoring, they're unprofitable. One Revolut customer lost their ten-year account for receiving small payments from friends splitting bills, flagged as "unregistered business activity."

We had our bank account closed unexpectedly by TSB Bank two months ago, with whom we had banked for over 10 years. There was no explanation and no justification — just a cold letter stating that the account would be closed in 30 days.

The worst part is that the letter took 10 working days to arrive at our office from the date it was produced, which materially reduced the time available for us to make alternative banking arrangements and ensure continuity for payments and business administration.

This then created a significant practical burden: we had to go through the process of opening a new bank account, wait for it to be approved and fully operational, and then update banking details across multiple companies. To compound matters, some companies were unable to recognise the new bank details when they were provided, which caused processing delays and, in turn, delays to our revenue.